Within the Global Citizens stream in the Coordinated Arts Program, the following ingredients have been added to the academic blender in order to produce the perfect Global Citizen smoothie: Political Science, Sociology, and ASTU (Literature Studies). However, a few students have taken it upon themselves to add specific ingredients (topics) of their choosing to bring forth new flavours (insights) to pre-existing ingredients.

     Priya’s first blog post addresses a very controversial topic that has stood the test of time (probably ever since technological advancements with CRT TV’s): Media monopolization. Although the focus of her post revolves around Shazad’s academic research on learning and  memory, Priya highlights a quote by a student within Shazad’s writing that accentuates the topic of media monopolization – “Dealing with the biases of media, it has become hard to inform my own paradigm”.

    This sour flavour of manipulation relates to Nico’s post about the Syrian Refugee Crisis, as the media plays a substantial role on how much information about the crisis is conveyed to its audience. Nico expresses how important global cooperation is during a time of need, and also stresses how important it is to not fall victim to the ‘Bystander Effect.’ This is in relation to a student’s observation of how the media reports the crisis in a more EU centric, implying that North America has no obligation to aid the migrants.

    Kaveel, Ina, and Taylor have chosen similar ingredients by further examining Shazad`s research, and have chosen to focus on the idea of Shazad`s idea of “Interpretive Communities.” These communities encourage active learning through the participation of two (or more) people, and the technologies used by Interpretive Communities include (but are not limited too) lectures in a school setting (Kaveel), blogs (Ina), social media, and books. It is also worth noting that some sort of bias will always develop within Interpretive Communities, because that is the inevitable flavour of sharing information (Taylor), especially within the media (Priya).

   All of the ingredients that these students have shown are reminders of how important it is to be aware and knowledgeable of the current state of the globe, as there is always two sides of a coin. Being ignorant of the other side only leads to unnecessary bias, and could lead to falling victim to the ‘Bystander Effect.’ Therefore, it is important to have an open mind and acknowledge the different perspectives this fortunate (or unfortunate) world has to offer.